Bring Your Own Device (BYOD) is a policy that companies around the world are embracing whether they want to or not. The policy is only getting more popular with the number of different devices that are available these days. The time of handing out one kind of mobile phone to every employee, that is secure and completely controlled by a company, is long over. Both American and other companies around the globe need to figure out a way to adjust rather than attempt to change.
With the holiday season just past, most of the larger companies have to find a way to deal with employees bringing in their shiny new toys, wanting to get on the network. As Security Info Watch points out, the number one factor when it comes to mobile-device risk is rooted in ownership of the device. Employees who bring in their new iPhone (News - Alert) 5S are exposing their companies to different risks and behaviors that are quite a bit different from those that the company is used to dealing with.
Because the employee owns the device and not the company, there are safeguards that simply cannot be put in place that otherwise would be, were the ownership different. The biggest difference in use is that an employee will put personal applications on the device that could have any number of back doors or security flaws. This wouldn’t be allowed if the company owned the device.
Coming up with security measures on the enterprise level can be a daunting task for IT employees. While there are some policies that can be put in place, such as restricting where a company’s employees get their applications, the only sure-fire way to stop security breaches is education. A company’s training policy can help employees understand the right ways to protect their new mobile devices, and their old ones from malicious hackers. This is the best way that companies can make sure they are keeping malicious programmers off their own network.
Edited by Rory J. Thompson